Yearning
by goldenfiligree
Summary: Chrona is being held responsible for the disappearance of Soul and Maka. Kid leaves his beloved in order to find out what exactly happened to his fellow meister and her weapon. *Note: Chrona is a girl.
1. Loved

**Chrona**

Embers in your eyes: they glint like gold in the light of my room. Your hands snake around my body. I was pinned under your weight. You acted like you knew everything, and just by that look I'd believe you. I'd believe anything you told me from our life together until death and even after that moment when you cast your essence to the road and water, I believed you. Even when you're a thousand miles away I'd believe you.

I sit in the gloom of this dungeon where the rats are acrobats on tightrope rails, scurrying to the beat of the drip-drop pipes. And I wait for you to come to me, telling me everything will be all right. And maybe one day you'll reappear with your lips turned upward and arms outstretched like the wings of an angel, coming to wrap around me for protection.

It's been so long since you left on this journey, so long since you caressed my skin or called my name. But it's not you who is missing alone. Gemmed eyes of ruby and emerald also haunt my visions. Laughter and simple secrets passing from lips to ears, jokes made out of simple quirks. I remember that life, yet the picture is gone. All that's left is snippets of dialogue, beautiful, haunting eyes and the faintest idea that somewhere, some how, I was loved.


	2. Missing

**Kid**

Sometimes I wake at night to the sound of your screams as they dragged you down to that pitiful place, the same room they held your mother in long ago. I remember once when we were younger, after we brought you back for the second time, I took you to that place. Your eyes grew sad and distant and I knew you could still feel her presence. Dou you still feel it now, I wonder?

I pick my jacket up from the floor and reach into my pocket. I pull out the lock of your hair and stroke it, wishing to run my fingers through your candy colored tresses. I miss everything about you, even the way you still have a problem with handling things. How are you handling yourself? Do you miss me?

Outside my window I see the Moon looking dull, blood running out his mouth that is turned in a scowl. Maybe he sees the injustice that has happened. Maybe he and the Sun could point me to where Maka and Soul are so that I can come home and free you from your cage in Shibusen.


	3. Write

**Chrona**

Sunlight gleams on my face through the metal bars, warms my skin like your touch. I mark another day off in the journal I found under the bed. The writing from earlier entries looks to be my own. I read and reread the entries in hopes of removing the blotches from my memory.

_Today Maka and I went to the mall. She told me a secret, but I wonder.. Are these things all right to write down? Secrets are meant to be kept between certain people, correct? But, Maka did say that this was something I could keep my secrets in. That's why she gave it to me. _

My eyes scan the pages. _Maka._ The name made only a small connection, olive eyes and a wide smile. Her voice was a scream in my head. Her lips caressed the cheek of a person with white hair, but who were they? Frustration racks my head. That quaking feeling returns to my stomach like it does every time I try to remember them.

A knock sounds heavily on my door and I shut the book, placing it in the blackness under the bed. I see a pair of green eyes the same shade as in my dream through the peephole in the door. "Chrona Makenshi," his voice sounds. "May I speak with you?" This question is just a courtesy; he always would come in around this time. He would always ask me the same questions. And I would always give him the same answers.


	4. Daughters

**Spirit**

"Pass," she tells me, her grey eyes look sad.

"Where is Maka?" I try once more.

"Pass."

I take her hand in mine as I watch small tears trail down her cheeks. "She's your best friend, Chrona. She's my daughter, you have to remember her." I close my eyes and sigh. Is there anything I can do to make you remember what happened to my child, to the boy she loved—loves?

There isn't much I can do, but I think back to the day Chrona was brought back to Shibusen. Kid had just escaped Noah's clutches and was brought back bruised and bloodied, mumbling apologies to Black Star, who was also beaten up.

"We still haven't had any word from Kiddo-kun," I inform her. The look in her eyes at the mention of his name is even worse than when I was questioning her. This girl who is almost like a daughter to me, started to cry even harder. I wrap my arms around her and think about how much she really is like Maka. "I'm sorry for pushing you, Chrona. I know you would tell me everything if you could remember."

She stares up at me, eyes still brimming with tears, nails digging into my arms. "Spirit-san, I'm so sorry."


	5. Fog

**Chrona**

Time passes slowly through steel bars and cement blocks. Clouds roll through and the condensation in the air seems odd to me. I had never known there to be fog in the state of Nevada, but there it had been creeping through my only source of fresh air.

Dew could be felt accumulating on the small amounts of flesh that I had exposed and dribble down my skin as I watch the smoke-like mist creep into my confinement. Fear ebbed into the pit of my stomach with waves of panic lapping up into red embers on my cheeks. _Who is this?_

As I back into the corner I watch the wisps take a new shape. Tendrils reached out like arms and legs, stretching like a cat. They gained density as the form solidified into a new being. I clung tightly to the pillow in my arms and buried my face. _She can't come back._


	6. News

**Kid**

The small town of Seaview was the first lead I'd found in a while. There had been reports of you coming here for a few months with a brigade of others. Questions lurked in my mind as I asked about your party. They would always give me bits and pieces of information, only giving birth to more and more questions.

"A big fella, something on his eye, and a weird looking frog girl? Nah, she wasn't with those folks, from my recollection." Nobody had seen the likes of Eruka, Medusa or any of their group, but they saw her with someone. _Something._

I focus my memory on every scrap of detail they give me, anything that could help our present situation. A name is mentioned, one that I had only heard once before in a story from before Shibusen, before father had even punished Asura.

"I'm sorry," I tell the man in the middle of his long-winded speech about meisters versus magic. I don't even go back to the inn to retrieve my belongings as I set out for Shibusen.


	7. Arsippe

**Chrona**

Gelid fingers caress my skin: sheets of snow blanketing my arms. My face is buried in the pillow once more as the something wet presses against my ear and I shudder in response. _This can't be happening. You are gone. _She_ made sure of it._

The icy shadow-specter glides along my skin, telling me things incoherently. I know the face, the glossy eyes, flared nostrils. "Arsippe," I whisper the name and a sour tastes crawls into my mouth.

"That's right, poppet," she says as she takes hold of my arms. "Give Auntie a kiss." The fanged smile careens closer and the smoky bat-witch snarls, showing dim yellowish teeth. She hovers a whisper beyond my face, filling me with a terror great than that which I felt from my own mother when her presence possessed me.

Gauzy fabric drapes from her arms like the anima she has been gifted with as she embraces me. I look toward the door, wondering where Spirit is and if I was wrong about the time because of the weather. I hold my breath as I wait to hear the staccato clipping of his shoes on the stone floor.

Her body feels like a corpse, bluish frozen weight clad in sheer clouds of dust. My eyes are held tightly shut and I count backwards from 100. Once I get to 43 I can't even feel her anymore; I can't feel anything. I feel my features start to soften, the hollowness of my existence evaporating into the dark. If anything it starts to feel warmer, is that you I feel?

Alight appears in the darkness, glowing gold. Is that your face I see?

My name is called like a siren, but I don't dare move.


	8. Paralysis

**Nygus**

The first thing I saw were the bites on her neck. Neat puncture wounds coupled together on the jugular. A feint pulse was found and I began to check the rest of her. Spirit waited as Sid assisted me with Chrona. There was no blood loss, no other damage to her body. It was strange though, like a vampire had taken to her. If Ragnarok wasn't present in her body the girl could have died. I placed a linen-wrapped hand on the girl's forehead, wondering what could have gone on in the dungeon just minutes before Spirit entered.

The second thing I noticed was how rigid she was. Something about the way she seemed frozen was intimidating. Her blood work showed no signs of anesthetic or other type of poisoning and her inability to move was a psychological problem instead of a neurological one. It was as though her mind kept her in a stat of paralysis.

"Is she all right?" Sid asked me as we moved her from a gurney to a bed in the Shinigami household. I shook my head and told him what I could figure when the door slammed against the wall. Kid was drenched with rain from the storm earlier that day, making his featured skewed by watermarks and dirt. His chest heaved as tried to catch his breath and Sid came to his side.

"Father. I need to speak with Father."


	9. Suppression

**Chrona**

Where I am at I feel no pain. I see those golden eyes and easy smile gliding along a smooth white surface. Milk and honey. I remember drinking in the your smell, like fresh air and magnolia-perfumed water. What is your name? Am I yours? I know I am. I must be, and where I am I can't feel you, but I can sense you.

Something about the air sizzling on my skin or the way my mouth is going dry in my sleep state makes me feel that you are close to me. But I also feel cold, like I am eons away from you, falling own an abyss where not even God (who is that?) can save me now.


	10. Doppleganger

**Kid**

I look to your figure, your lips going blue. Are you dying in that shell of your skin? Or are you just waiting for me to bring you warmth? I've missed you for so long, distraught that my first encounter with you in months is finding you almost lifeless on my bed. It's as thought you're chiseled from tinted ice and I cry.

"Chrona," your name leaves my lips, "Chrona," I repeat your name again and again, getting louder with each utterance. Your skin becomes warm under my palms and I know that you are going to come to, I just have to beg you a while longer. I hope unto hope that you will recognize my voice, my hands, anything that will bring you back.

Your eyes flutter open, a complacent grin pulling at your lips. Your eyes seem hollow. As though only your physical form is truly you.

"Are you all right, Chrona?" Nygus asks as I look even deeper into your eyes.

You nod your response, but I can tell something is off. The way your grin seems to be mocking me, taunting me in a way that you would never have done before. The only thought in my mind scared me. _Am I too late?_

She eats just like you, acts just like you, but I know the girl inside you isn't you. She notices the way I shy away from her touch, as though she and you share the memories of us. Part of me looks at her and wants to kiss her, because she looks exactly like you. Are you inside of that body too? I can only wish that you are and that you are fighting this poltergeist taking you over.

Chichue asks me why I don't come for you. I have yet to tell him about Arsippe and that perhaps she is the entity disguising herself as you. Once I figure out if it really is her, I will go to my father and tell him what is going on.


	11. Fading

**Chrona**

My body isn't mine, neither is half my mind. Images come in torrents. They are images of you, bursts of sounds that are like fireworks where ever I am. Infinite instances where you are present are catalogued in my mind as I share my body with her essence. Can you tell we're different? Can they? Was I that generic in myself that _she_ could pass for that meek, timid thing that you loved?

The longer I wait for you to find me, the colder it seems to grow. She etches herself into my person, day-by-day, moment by moment. Is this only piece of me shrinking, disintegrating into nothingness? Is her soul pushing mine out? And will I go out like a snuffed candle?


End file.
